Thursday, July 28, 2011

Moving Comics

...

or, at least, comics that move are a subject that has fascinated me recently.

The last one I did got a pretty good response, with some questions about how I did it. Well, you should know that I'm almost always making things up, so I can't be considered and authority on this (or any) subject. Anyway, I'm sure there are a bunch of ways to get to the result that I did, but I will divulge my secrets (which are so simple that, upon their divulging, you will wonder why you even asked).

Ideally, I think it would be cool to build in a Flash functionality that allowed readers to click on a panel when they are ready to watch the animation. That way, you could get the benefit of animating moments while maintaining a more traditional feel to the comic (one that doesn't distract from the other panels because of the constant movement). I might do a little more studying to look into that option. It may involve learning some code, so buckle up.

Some Philosophy:

There are advantages and disadvantages inherent to both animation and comics. Comics, similar to novels, have the ability to delve into a world rich with sensory experience via the words and images on a page. In film, ideas can only be conveyed visually or aurally. That said, film has the advantage of time-manipulation; a director can control exactly how long you see and hear things. You can't do that with comics.

Sure, comics employ some parlor tricks: filling pages with dialogue or stacking multiple drawings that depict an action in order to slow down the reading experience. But at the end of the day, a reader gets through a comic as fast as he or she wants. The author does not control time.

By animating comics, the author can cheat a little. I can manipulate small moments of time within a panel. I think this has tremendous potential. I apologize that all I've used it for so far is to make jokes about butts and handing bricks of hash to minors.

The point is that someone with more noble tastes than me could do something really great with this. Please, noble people of the interweb, I adjure you: make great things with moving comics!

The Tricks:

I use Flash (CS3) to make the comic. I'm most familiar with this program when it comes to animating digitally, so the drawing process is pretty intuitive. When planning out individual panels, I try to make sure that things loop in increments of 24 frames, so that if I end up with panels of different loop lengths, they don't hiccup (so to speak) when the loop comes full circle.

I've tried a number of methods for actual GIF file-creation. Flash's compression engine is sort of crummy, so I tried a handful of export options in After Effects (also CS3). After Effects GIFs had similar compression issues in my experience.

1. Export Quicktime (.mov) from After Effects at full quality.2. In Photoshop, File>Import>Video to Layers. Your animation will show up in a stack of layers.3.Cmd+Option+Shift+S ...it's a heck of a hotkey, please stretch before attempting.4. Preview your .GIF, mess with the options, get it to where you like it.5. Export!

Blogger has weird issues hosting gifs sometimes, so I have been using Photobucket to host the files, and then embedding image links in blog posts. I have noticed other gifs elsewhere on blogger that seem to work just fine--what are you folks doing to get yours to work?

Like I said, there are probably less convoluted ways of making GIFs, but this is what's been working for me. Let me know if you have any luck with this process, or if you have a method of your own that you use to make GIFs. I understand there are ways to make GIFs exclusively within Photoshop as well. Anyone with experience doing so, please chime in!

My thanks to you if you read this far. With any luck, I'll keep experimenting with these in the future. See you soon!

Adorable comic as always, and thanks for posting your process! I'm not as familiar with flash, so it's a little over my head...but I want to get to it someday!

I've tried making gifs exclusively in Photoshop, but I feel like it's needlessly complicated since you have to have all the layers set up. Every time I try to make a longer gif PS also freezes and crashes (on my work computer, no less!) so I'm giving up on that for now. I might just be doing something wrong, though.

while on the subject of comics and animation, you might find this comic somewhat interesting - http://balak01.deviantart.com/art/about-DIGITAL-COMICS-111966969

fair warning.. there's a bit of colorful language at the beginning, but the guy's REALLY on to something - i could maybe see a combination of your animated comics, and what he's doing in this one to create some interesting effects.. gotta learn me some flash, or something. lots of cool possibilities.

First of all--hi-larious comic. The hiccuping animation is super adorable! I miss Flash CS3...I have CS4 on my computer these days and it's super buggy. In the past I've gone straight from Flash to Photoshop...I definitely want to try adding After Effects to the mix now!

hahaha really funny post/comic!! great hearing about the process too. In flash if you make your drawing into a button, you can make it so when people roll over it it'll play the loop, and you could make each panel like that. it wont be too hard either! blogger might be weird about posting .swf files though. this video shows some of the process, and instead of a blue rectangle you could have a movie clip symbol that contains your animation, no coding required :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUrl35dqIdI haha i hope thats useful info?

The Illustrious and Illustrative Sketch Adventure Lifestyle of Anthony Holden. Cartoons, Sketches, Character Designs, Storyboards, Comics, Illustration, Animation, Silly thoughts, Intermittent Posting, and Arbitrary Capitalization by American animation artist, Anthony Holden. Thanks for stopping by and taking a look!All content on this page copyright 2007-2011 Anthony L. Holden. Do not use without permission, except for purposes of review.